Advertisement
Published: November 5th 2007
Edit Blog Post
The Ferry
Our overnight accommodation lands at Le Havre. After the epic journey involving all that British rail could throw at us, and then the (thankfully) relatively calm ferry ride, we arrived in Le Havre Sunday morning after the game JUST a little weary... We had the usual fight with the hire car company, en francaise, but finally managed to get the correct car and set sail for the village of Balleroy in Normandy, which is where we had booked our first gite (holiday cottage). We'd booked a cottage there because our main aim was to visit the D-day beaches on the Normany coast. The first morning we woke up to rain, so our carefully planned tour was immediately called off by the Tour Directors - Joe and Dean - good thing they weren't in charge back on 6th June, 1944.... An alternative plan was put in place, by the alternate Tour Directors - Gay and Vicky, and off we went to Bayeux to have a little walk around the town and to visit the Tapestry. It (The Musee de la Tapisserie de Bayeux) would have to be, without doubt, the best value-for-money museum we visited the entire time we were away, as well as being an amazing entity in
Balleroy
We were hopeful that this might be our gite....no, turned out to be some balloon hot spot though. its own right. It's basically a news-reel of the events surrounding William conquering England in 1066, only it's in cotton, and its managed to survive nearly 1000 years, despite being carted all around the countryside at the whim of whoever was in charge of it at the time! We were also able to visit the D-Day Landing museum in Bayeux on the same day, before visiting the actual beaches, which meant we were Much Better Informed when viewing the actual beaches -or at least- this was the theory put forward by our trusty D-Day Tour Guides... This museum (Musee Memorial 1944 Bataille de Normandie) was overwhelmingly sad in that, over and over, the comments made by the Allied soldiers were not about how heroic they felt as they walked through the French towns and villages being hailed as Liberators; but rather they wrote how desolate they felt to see the havoc and the destruction that their own bombs had caused. The amazing thing is that so many buildings DID survive when they were bombed so ferociously by both sides. The next exciting thing on the itinerary for the day was a visit to the supermarket... (it still counts as shopping!).
Balleroy
This IS our place -the side gate anyway. It looks lovely and it WOULD have been, if only someone had thought to take a vacuum cleaner to it some time in the last 100 years! The supermarket at Bayeux was an E Leclerc which quickly became our favourite. As Gay said " You can buy anything there from lawnmowers to lingerie!" but the best thing is you can buy Cassis! and very nice red wine for 2 euros - we even lashed out and paid 3 euros once! The next day (luckily) was fine, so our long awaited excursion to the D-Day beaches could go ahead! An early start was planned, but alas, we had assimilated SO well into the European culture that none of us were able to get out of bed before 9am. When we eventually got on the road, our first stop was the delightful fishing village of Porte-au-Bessin, which is in the middle of the D day beaches- Gold, Juno and Sword to the right where the British and Canadian forces landed, and Omaha and Utah to the left which were the responsibility of the American forces. We turned left to Omaha beach, wandered about there for a bit and then moved on to Pointe du Hoc. I found this place really moving... it's quite beautiful, but all the scars from the battle of 1944 are still there. This is the
Bayeux
Just a little bit damp... this is us on the way into the Tapestry- point where the american Rangers were ordered to scale 200m crumbling vertical cliffs, using the technology available at the time (ropes and folding ladders) all the while being pounded from on high by the Germans. In the meantime their own planes had dropped bombs along the top of the cliffs and you can still see the huge holes where the bombs have exploded, and where great chunks of concrete were thrown about when the bunkers exploded. The really strange thing was that while all this was going on, all along the Normandy Coast, 6th June, 1944 - NO-ONE was game enough to wake Hitler to tell him! Now that's taking this European habit of sleeping in a bit tooo far in my opinion. Our last stop was the interestingly named coastal village of "Quineville" which is at the far end of Utah beach - obviously one of my ancestors did all right for themselves, as there is a rather nice Chateau associated with the town -we thought of stopping by to check up if they were missing an heir, but unfortunately - due to our late start- we ran out of time. Wednesday we saw quite a bit of the
Bayeux
The old part of town with the mandatory millstream running through, so that the tanneries etc could download all their toxins - note the genuine Frenchman on the right standing by his bike. French countryside as we travelled from Balleroy in the West of France, to Varennes-sur-Fouzon in the Loire, via St-Michel-Mount (with a small, unplanned tour of Tours along the way). Our gite in Varennes wasjust beautiful - the owners call it 'Maison-des-Reves' - their house of dreams. Well it was a dream come true for me because it was so clean! The other nice thing we discovered about Varennes was again, the people! When we went to the local Town Hall for instance, to ask if there was any internet in the village, the lady behind the counter straight away invited me to use hers! What a champ! We had wanted to stay in the Loire to see the castles, so we chose Chenonceau as The One. It was quite idyllic, so I can understand why there were all the fights over it. Henri II gave it to his mistress Dianne de Poitiers for "great and commendable services to the Crown"... (hmmm... that must be what they called it in 1547!)and she did such a top decorating job that Henri's wife, the evil Catherine de Medici chucked her out and took over as soon as old Henri was killed. We also
E. Leclerc / Bayeux
I tried desperately to persuade Dean that this little Eiffel Tower (filled with cognac!) would make a great souvenir for someone-and would be ABSOLUTELY no trouble to cart around for the rest of the trip....well, he bought the beer... went to Amboise, where the high point along the way was absolutely going to be (according to ALL the tourist books) Pagode De Chanteloup - which is some sort of tower thingy in the middle of nowhere -well....not sure it would make my Top Ten list, that's for sure... We actually had quite a bit of trouble locating the ancient castle of Amboise which is where most of the French kings were born. Thank heavens there were 4 of us as Gay eventually found it - it turned out to be lurking right behind us! WE thought the high point of Amboise was going to be the Clos de Luce where Leonardo da Vinci spent his last few years. IBM have taken over the place and they have built all of Leonardo's inventions using only the materials that would have been available at the time. We stopped short when we discovered what it was going to cost...15 euros pp (more than twice what it costs to get into the Louvre for heaven's sake)! - we were used to value-for-money museums in France by this time and weighed up the cost against how many bottles of red wine we could purchase,
Porte-au-Bessin
Very peaceful here now.... and so eventually decided in favour of the wine. Saturday was our next travelling day - from Varenes-sur-Fouzon to Caylus in the Midi-Pyrenees- mostly on the big motorway (Yes!) -very little opportunity to get lost there. Of course, as soon as you settle back and think all will be smooth sailing... the phone rings. It's a Sydney number. All my friends and family have been warned only to ring in cases of dire emergency. Obviously -Something Bad has happened. I answer. It's Peter from Parramatta calling (remember, this is costing me $2.50/minute plus connection fee), and am I single? Don't I remember him? I must. I was only talking to him on Parramatta Road yesterday, he was in the wedding party, remember, and am I single? .....Hmmm, the centime drops... My darling daughter has given some wanker she can't get rid of, MY phone number! Well! She, and the rest of my touring party thought this was hilarious. By comparison, our next adventure - ringing Genevieve, the owner of our next gite in Caylus (who only speaks Frrench) to get directions - ... was a doddle compared to getting rid of Peter....
Advertisement
Tot: 0.27s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 11; qc: 46; dbt: 0.069s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
joseph mcgeever
non-member comment
france
I love the berret on Dean. All he's missing is a bunch of onions around his neck and a stripey top. I tell you what. Those french dont half know how to build a descent chateau